Truth & Salvage Co.
Truth & Salvage Co.
Truth & Salvage Co
Silver Force/ Megaforce
Duke Ellington, the legendary jazzman and composer was once quoted as saying that “there are two kinds of music. Good music and the other kind.” Sure, it’s a hilarious and insightful quote from someone who in many ways espouses something we should all follow: a healthy distrust of categorization and a love of music that should make us think, that should make us feel something very profound and honest. In an ideal world that would be fantastic for music lovers and even some critics. However, it does seem to be a general human trend to name, to categorize in order to put some degree of order in a chaotic world. In terms of music, literature, art or hell anything else, it also makes it easy – even for those who may be a bit lazy – to compare a certain piece of music to another piece of music, for example. There’s an innate part of us that somehow is attracted to genre and its conventions, and I believe that just like a piece of music, a favorite artist or beloved album, we make powerful associations towards genres. When it comes to country and southern rock, in my mind I can’t shake several different images and thoughts. I think of sitting in the tiny Cooperstown Diner on Cooperstown, NY’s Main Street with George Strait playing from the kitchen as my girlfriend and I somehow got into a conversation with two local farmers. I can see the morning fog gently lifting in an orange grove, just outside of tiny Orangeburg, SC. I somehow think of the farm towns of north central New York – towns like Broome, Herkimer, Ilion, Mohawk, Richfield Springs, Schuyler Lake, Jordanville, Fly Creek and other dots on the map hipsters wouldn’t dare go. And interestingly enough, after a couple of listens to Truth & Salvage Company’s debut record, I found myself thinking of all of those places with a renewed vigor.
Granted, on their first record, Truth & Salvage Company’s songs are primarily rooted around some common country music clichés – trucks, drinking, carrying on and being up to no good, the open road, finding good women, finding bad women, love having redemptive power and the like. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and others all have songs with these themes coming up repeatedly throughout their work. But where Nelson and Cash may have occasionally displayed a worldly weariness, this album is much more rollicking and raucous. This album probably one of the most fun albums I’ve heard so far this year, and it stems from the fact that it sounds much like 6 close friends jamming out on a Saturday afternoon. It’s a sort of shaggy and loose feel similar to the Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson “VH1 Storytellers” sessions where there’s tons of jokes and ribbing throughout, and I think that’s where Truth & Salvage Co. gets it charm from. “Hail Hail,” the opening track has probably the most playfully debauched chorus on the album which just describes a bunch of guys smoking weed and drinking beer all night. “Old Piano,” has by the album’s most compelling lines that somehow manage to be a bit clichéd but profoundly earnest. This song reminds me the most of “Dissident” on Pearl Jam’s classic Vs. “Call Back” displays a sense of harmony similar to early Crosby, Stills and Nash. While a song such as “See Her,” is extremely reminiscent of the guitar work of the Allman Brothers. All of this should be no real surprise as the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson is listed as one of the record’s producers.
Sonically, Truth & Salvage Co. won’t blow you like T. Bone Burnett’s ridiculously amazing The True-False Identity or the North Mississippi All Stars’ Electric Blue Watermelon: Chopped and Screwed EP – two albums with psychedelic, avant garde tendencies and guitar pyrotechnics. As a debut, Truth & Salvage Company’s effort may not be an instantly classic album, but the band shows a shaggy charm and fun-living spirit that should make a live show a helluva lot of fun, and in turn that should win the hearts of jaded audiophiles who may be looking for a good time.
Release Date: 5/25/10
Song List
1. Hail Hail
2. Call Back
3. Welcome to L.A.
4. Heart Like a Wheel
5. See Her
6. Old Piano
7. 101
8. Jump the Ship
9. She Really Does it for Me
10. Rise Up
11. Brothers, Sons and Daughters
12. Pure Mountain Angel
